The command device snav enables manipulation
with a SpaceNavigator® 3D mouse from
3Dconnexion.
The fly option indicates whether the force applied to the device
should be interpreted as acting on the camera (true), where
pushing forward zooms in because it moves the camera viewpoint toward the scene,
or as acting on the models in the scene (false, default), where
pushing forward zooms out because it pushes the models away.
In either case, however, it is the camera that actually moves.
The speed option sets a sensitivity factor for motion
relative to the device (default 1.0).
Decreasing the value (for example, to 0.1) reduces sensitivity to give
slower motion, whereas increasing the value has the opposite effect.
See also: mousemode

The vr command (same as device vr)
enables a virtual reality mode for systems supported by
SteamVR, including HTC Vive, Oculus Rift,
and Samsung Odyssey. SteamVR must be installed separately by the user
and started before the mode is enabled.
In addition, Oculus Rift users should start the Oculus runtime
before starting SteamVR. For details and related issues,
see ChimeraX virtual reality.
See also: camera,
view,
meeting,
making movies

The display option indicates what to show in the ChimeraX graphics
window on the desktop:

mirror (default) - the right-eye view seen in the VR headset,
with graphics waitForVsync
automatically set to false so that VR rendering will not slow down
to the desktop rendering rate

independent - a separate camera view
fixed in the VR room coordinates, set to match the viewpoint of
the VR headset when the command is issued

blank - no graphics, allowing all graphics computing
resources to be dedicated to VR headset rendering

Updating the graphics window can cause flicker in the VR headset
because refreshing the computer display (nominally 60 times per second)
slows rendering to headset. ChimeraX turns off syncing to
vertical refresh if possible. Another way to mirror is to use
SteamVR's menu entry to display mirror window.

The showControllers option (default true)
shows representations of the hand controllers in the scene.
Not showing the representations may be useful to avoid time-consuming
calculations of the shadows they cast.

The clickRange option sets the depth range for
picking objects with the hand-controller cones, where r
(default 5.0) is the maximum distance from the tip of the cone
to the object in scene distance units, typically Å.
Limiting the range prevents accidentally picking far-away objects.

By default, pressing the Vive hand-controller
menu button (similar for other systems)
shows all the tools that are on the right side of the desktop interface
as a control panel in VR. However,
the gui option allows showing the single tool with title bar
contents tool-title instead. Subsituting all
(or any other string that is not a tool title) for tool-title
restores the default behavior of showing all righthand tools.

The simplifyGraphics option (default true)
reduces the maximum level of detail in VR by limiting the
total atom and bond triangles to one million each.
This helps to maintain full rendering speed. The previous total-triangle
limits are restored when the VR mode is turned off. Normally,
the maximum atom and bond triangles are set to five million each.
See also: graphics

Ambient shadowing or “ambient occlusion”
requires calculating shadows from multiple directions,
which may make rendering too slow for VR and cause stuttering in the headset.
By default (multishadowAllowedfalse),
if the multiShadow
lighting parameter is > 0, enabling VR switches to the
simple lighting mode.
With multishadowAllowedtrue,
the lighting mode is left unchanged.

When the mode is enabled, the roomPosition option can be used to
specify the transformation between room coordinates (in meters,
with origin at room center) and scene coordinates (typically in Å)
or to simply report the current transformation
in the Log.
The transformation matrix is given as
12 numbers separated by commas only, corresponding to a 3x3 matrix
for rotation and scaling, with a translation vector in the fourth column.
Ordering is row-by-row, such that the translation vector is given as
the fourth, eighth, and twelfth numbers. Example:

vr room 20,0,0,0,0,20,0,0,0,0,20,0

The icons option (default false) indicates whether
to show a panel of icons when the controller trackpad is touched.
This user interface is deprecated, replaced by pressing the hand controller
menu button which shows the standard ChimeraX user interface in VR.

UCSF Resource for Biocomputing, Visualization, and Informatics /
November 2018